Oct 26-28, 2007, Ptarmigan Ridge, Mt. Baker

This trip was my Brother and my annual backpacking trip.  Every year we get busier and it gets pushed out later.  This year it was late enough to be a snowcamping trip!  We're pretty new to backcountry skiing, but were stoked to add skiing to a two night backpacking trip.  That's where TAY comes in.  First of all, I never new such a site existed until I was relentlessly google-ing "dynafit" to learn all I could about the bindings and TAY came up.  It was like a whole new world opened up to me.  As many might relate, it's hard to meet other outdoor enthusiasts, especially cold weather ones.  Most of my friends just think I'm a little nutz to go out in the snow for a weekend.  But I found a whole community of nutz like me!  So I wanted to find a place near where my brother lives.  He has kids which makes it harder for him to get out, so I'm willing to drive from Portland up to Sedro Wooley, but I don't know the area.  After researching posts, it looked like ptarmigan ridge was good, but I wanted a little more info.  I sent a pm to Telemon who is familiar with the area and he responded!  You old pros are probably saying to yourselves "no sh!t sherlock, that's what this website is for," but it's a pretty cool deal for me. 

Anyway, we got to the mt baker ski area parking lot Friday around noon and hiked about a mile before we started skinning.  The road was mostly bare.  A guy said just 3 days prior it was 1-2' deep at the parking lot.  It was a blue-bird day.  I didn't realize Shuksan was so close, or so jagged.  I wonder if there is a dog route I couldn't see.  There were quite a few people at Artist's point, but not past it.  We had a hard time finding the Table Mountain Trail, but once we did it was pretty straightforward.  It was mostly snow covered, about 95%.  We ended up camping pretty close to the saddle at the start of the ptarmigan ridge trail.  Really nice spot, out of the way of any traffic.

So the next really cool thing about TAY:  On Saturday, my bro and I were relaxing when my dog started barking.  We put our skis on and went over the ridge to check it out, and there are Telemon (I recognized from pictures from posts), Nick-BC and Scotsman!  What a trip, to be in the middle of nowhere and run into people from this site!  We chatted for a while, even skied with them for a couple hundred feet.  We were still basically in the clothes we slept in, so we took off without really skiing with them, but it was still fun.  It's pretty cool that some of these guys are twice my age!  I hope I'm that lucky.

Anyway, about the skiing.  We went back to camp and ate lunch, got ready to go, and headed back.  By the time we had eaten and were done dorkin' around, those guys had already taken off.  We saw thier tracks, where they went back up and down a couple of times, probably the term "yo-yo" I've seen used, and pretty much just followed them.  Awesome skiing.  It was smooth.  The light wasn't as good Saturday as Friday, but still fine.

Sunday packed up and headed out.  Skied creatively to within about 1/4 mile of the parking lot.

Nice meeting you guys!

Hey, November is here, the first opportunity for two consecutive months for me!